Sheldon, Iowa — Normally, firefighters, other first responders, and volunteer storm spotters would be getting their annual chance to find out more about severe storms out at Northwest Iowa Community College. But due to the pandemic, groups of that size are not allowed to meet. But that doesn’t mean that there will be no storm watch training this year in northwest Iowa.
We talked to Warning Coordination Meteorologist Peter Rogers at the National Weather Service’s Sioux Falls Office. He’s the guy who normally does the training. He says this year, things will be handled somewhat differently.
(as said:) “So in a normal year, we have several in-person classes that are held throughout the region for people to learn more about severe weather, ways to identify severe weather, and report that information back to us at the National Weather Service. But because of the coronavirus those classes have been canceled for the season. Depending on how things go, we might be able to reschedule some of those later spring or even some time this summer but in the interim, we are right now exploring some virtual options if people are interested in that they can go visit our website at weather.gov/SiouxFalls. People will be able to find information on how to get into those.”
If you’d like to register for online storm spotter training, just click here.
